Ask HN: Has anyone used affiliate programs for marketing?

We tried. COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME. Biggest waste of time in Fog Creek history. All that time would have been better spent adding features to make our products better to get more customers.

Yes I use affiliate marketing at my day time job. Nearly 40% of our sales come from affiliates. I am also readying to setup the same for my startup. I am planning to offer 50% of our sales because we don't have any operating costs, but in most cases the payout is around 30%. Note that to make your AM successful you will need to constantaly come up with new offers, incentives, banner ads etc... and communicate with your top earners. Make them happy.

I've been an affiliate, and am getting ready to launch our own in-house affiliate program (using iDevAffiliate) to promote our own products and services.

Feel free to drop me a line if you want to chat in more detail.

Your best bet would be to partner with an existing affiliate network who already have thousands of affiliates ready to promote your product. This is a better approach because if you create an in-house affiliate program, you are going to have to market that too.

Message me (AIM: ofchowdhury) and I can point you in the right direction.

Yes.

There's a lot to learn about affiliate marketing at http://wickedfire.com. There are tons of affiliates to converse with and also several affiliate network CEO's who post there. It's not uncommon for many affiliates here to make more than $2,000 a day from AM, so it'd be valuable to pick their brains.

I have... Commission Junction, LinkShare, Share-a-sale. They work well - but it's very important to create a good offer, 30-45% is good.

Also, good banners are important.

Each network has a different reach & size. Shareasale is small and Linkshare is extra large while Commission Junction is right in the middle - but has the highest quality members (in my opinion).

All in all - Affiliate Programs are only as effective as you make them, I suggest you spend money on landing page optimization, retargeting & click tracking in conjunction with Affiliate Marketing.

Some of you guys commenting here should make a few detailed blog posts about this topic. You sound like you know a lot about it.

For my own question. Any thoughts if I could make any money with affiliate marketing on this site: www.justoneclubcard.com

It only gets about 100 unique vistors per day but I figure it's pretty specific.

I've done it but its really hit or miss. You need to be constantly updating your offers, trying new niches, and pushing hard to keep a good relationship with you affiliate manager. Their are times when you will feel scummy but your wallet will be fat.

Not for my startup, but I've managed affiliate programs for clients, and am an affiliate of several products myself.